Looking Toward the Stars

Daniel Reichart gave two other DTHers and I a tour of the planetarium and a demonstration of UNC's involvement in a series of telescopes are changing the way people can access data from space.

I'm supposed to create a multimedia piece from my footage, but we'll see how well that goes. Not much happened. The most interesting part of the tour took place on a screen, which is not very interesting to a video camera. I know I have to get an interview piece because the tour narration alone will not thread the story together. Unfortuantely, that cannot happen until Wednesday.

I like these two photos, though, and this experience would have been better documented by photos alone, as can be seen in the accompanying photographer's resulting photos. How this turns out will be up in the air.

Post-graduation Life

Kavita and I had not talked in about a month and a half, so we decided to finally catch each other about our summer lives over some drinks. In the meantime, she became the start of what I hope to continue forever: a photo diary. As simple as it may seem, the more you shoot, the better you are. I know my work is good but I just the experience to make it better and to find the Ryan Jones style the world of photojournalism just can't live without.

In the process, I hope to do portraits of people that mean the world to me. Most of my friends will disperse in the coming months due to graduating, and I want to have great images to honor their pressences in my life. I love them all dearly and hope the images do them all justice.

Alena's Senior Portraits

Photographing senior portraits isn't as easy as I thought. Alena, my friend and first paying customer, wanted my style of photography, which isn't typically difficult to provide, but she also wanted the standard graduation photos that everyone loves with it. Add a time crunch and you got an overwhelmed Ryan.

I really want to learn how to meet my style with customer's demands. Since most photographers have to be freelancers now, it will be territory I have to cross for most of working life. In this case, I think I did it moderately well. You get the mixture of the stereotypical landscapes for UNC grad photos, but all the emotions are true, and I feel each has a twist. I also placed Alena in swings and on a sloping hill for a variety of scenery one typically doesn't find. They were my favorites, especially the one with the gazebo background. Unfortunately, at the same time, I feel they could be quite typical still.

What are your thoughts?

Silent Partners

This installation of In Their Boots focuses on the gay and lesbian partners of deployed military workers and how their relationships and lives must remain secret thanks to Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You meet three people: two gay civilian partners of deployed military workers and one non-deployed lesbian soldier dating a deployed one. Their stories are heart-wrenching, and captivating. If your eyes do not widen in shock when the second storyteller reveals his deployed partner was misinformed about his death but could not call to invalidate the information, then the whole piece will be lost on you. Besides the actual dishonorable discharge, that is DADT at its worst, which is brutal.

While the subjects and access blow typical documentary expectations out the water, the footage leaves me wanting more, especially the blurred scenes. The anonymity of these participants should be and were obviously the first concerns of the project workers, but there are various ways to approach subjects without giving away their identity.

In this case, certain shots are rendered useless because the attempt at protecting identities destroys the purpose of the scenes altogether (plus they even left the blur strips on footage that didn't require them). The tight face shot of the "Gay Solider's Husband" could not reveal the intended concentration, so why even include it? The final blurred result revealed nothing.

Varying the compositions, playing with body language and using silhouettes could have provided more visually dynamic shots while maintaining anonymity of those involved and the approachability of this work.

One of the best examples of such an approach to an unidentifiable subject I have seen was done by Eileen Mignoni, a graduated masters student from UNC. She forced her compositions to both hide and tell the story of an illegal immigrant currently living in the US and fearing to be deported, which would leave her American citizen daughter behind. To see this piece, go here:

http://facingdeportation.org/?page_id=6

A possible chance to merge these two types of works has appeared. I stumbled upon a deployed queer solider dating an undeployed one, and asked him about his story. I, as a queer and interested photojournalist, wanted to know more than anything why dealing with DADT was worth it.

"As far as the lies are considered, if that is what it takes, then yeah. I love my country and him. He feels the same way, so we do what we do. Serving is a sacrifice... each person has there own sacrifice. This is ours," he responded.

His calm, yet firm assurance in his duty instantly drew a desire to document he and his partner's lives. They live not far from my hometown, and I could spend time there while working on this project. I asked him about the possibility but he has not responded yet. It is a lot to ask of hidden people but I hope he realizes how important his story could be especially with so much recent contention over dissolving DADT.

I know I have posted a lot of possibilities on this blog but this one I want more than anything.